IBM System Storage SAN384B

Highest performance for the most demanding enterprise SAN environments

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Highlights

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Drive new levels of performance with 8 Gbps Fibre Channel (FC) and 10 Gbps Fibre Channel over Converged Enhanced Ethernet (FCoCEE) technologies in a compact design
Reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) through consolidation of network resources
Protect existing infrastructure investment while positioning for future technologies
Manage your infrastructure with greater flexibility and scalability
Unify management framework for consolidated and virtualized resources
Improve energy efficiency by combining higher band-width with reduced power consumption

The IBM® System Storage™ SAN384B fabric backbone is designed to be the premier platform for consolidation of your data center connectivity, providing high-performance and highly available data networking. Providing new levels of performance with industry-leading 8 Gbps Fibre Channel (FC) and 10 Gbps Fibre Channel over Converged Enhanced Ethernet (FCoCEE) technologies, it is also one of the first members of the IBM System Storage b-type SAN family designed to exploit Brocade®’s new Data Center Fabric architecture.

The SAN384B interoperates with other members of the IBM System Storage b-type SAN family as well as other fabrics.

It can be configured with a wide range of connectivity options, including 10, 8, 4, 2 and 1 gigabits per second (Gbps) Fibre Channel, 10 Gbps Fibre Channel over Converged Enhanced Ethernet, up to 8 Gbps Fibre Connectivity (FICON®), and Fibre Channel over Internet Protocol (FCIP) over 1 gigabit per second Ethernet (GbE).
It is also designed to enable support for emerging high-performance and high-function network protocols.
The SAN384B is designed to serve as the basis for transforming existing networks into a unified, high-performance data center fabric, connecting applications with their data and virtual servers with virtual storage.

As a member of the IBM System Storage family of b-type SAN products, the SAN384B is designed to participate in fabrics containing other b-type and m-type devices manufactured by Brocade. This versatile hardware can serve as a new top tier (or backbone) in a complex fabric and provide connections to other b-type and m-type directors, switches and routers.

Key features

Designed for enterprise and larger-midrange fabrics
Ideal as the “top tier” or core component in a core-to-edge fabric
New 8 Gbps FC and 10 Gbps FCoCEE switches hardware
8, 4, 2 and 1 Gbps server and device interfaces with auto-sensing capability
Brocade Fabric OS® is common across all members of the IBM b-type SAN family

Hardware summary

Chassis includes two control processor blades and two core module blades plus space for up to four port blades, dual power supplies, and two fan modules in an 8U rack height (plus 1U exhaust shelf)
Available 8 Gbps 16-port, 32-port and 48-port switch blades
Available 24-port FCoCEE blade
Available 6-port 10 Gbps Inter Switch Link (ISL) blades
Available FC routing blade with sixteen 4 Gbps FC ports and two Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports
Available 8 Gbps Extension blade containing twelve 8, 4, 2, and 1 Gbps FC ports, ten Ethernet ports supporting 1 GbE and up to two optional 10 GbE ports
Available optical transceivers include 10 Gbps, 8 Gbps and 4 Gbps shortwave small-form-factor pluggable (SFPs), 10 Gbps and 8 Gbps 10 km and 4 Gbps 4 km and 10 km longwave SFPs, 8 Gbps 25 km and 4 Gbps 30 km extended distance longwave SFPs, 10 G
Full Fabric and Universal Port operation (E_Port, F_Port and FL_Port)
Install in IBM TotalStorage® SAN Cabinet (2109-C36)